scholarly journals Awareness, attitudes and participation of teaching staff towards the open content movement in one university

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Reed

This research investigates the current awareness of, and participation in, the open content movement at one UK institution for higher education. The open content movement and the open educational resources can be seen as potential methods for reducing time and cost of technology-enhanced learning developments; however, its sustainability and, to some degree, its success are dependent on critical mass and large-scale participation. Teaching staff were invited to respond to a questionnaire. Respondents (n59) were open to the idea of sharing their own content and, similar to other studies, demonstrated existing practices of sharing resources locally amongst colleagues; however, there was little formal, large-scale sharing using suitable licenses. The data gathered concurs with other research suggesting a lack of awareness to the Creative Commons licenses as well as a lack of participation in large open educational resource repositories.Keywords: open educational resources; staff attitudes; sustainability(Published: 22 October 2012)Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2012, 20: 18520 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v20i0.18520

Author(s):  
Rory McGreal ◽  
Terry Anderson ◽  
Dianne Conrad

<p class="Abstract">Canada’s important areas of expertise in open educational resources (OER) are beginning to be built upon or replicated more broadly in all education and training sectors. This paper provides an overview of the state of the art in OER initiatives and open higher education in general in Canada, providing insights into what is happening nationally and provincially. There are growing examples of OER initiatives from several Canadian institutions offering free courses to Canadians and international learners. National open education initiatives include the federal government's Open Data pilot project and the Council of Ministers of Education of Canada (CMEC) support for the Open Educational Resource Paris Declaration, as well as Creative Commons Canada. Regionally, the western provinces of British Columbia and Alberta are supporting OER as part of major open education initiatives.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (20) ◽  
pp. 5637 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabio Nascimbeni ◽  
Daniel Burgos

The goal of this paper is to advance the understanding of the way university educators currently adopt open educational practices (OEP) by analyzing the relation between the use of open educational resources (OER) and the implementation of open teaching practices. The results are based on data collected through an online survey among 724 university educators. Depending on the actual use of OER and open teaching practices by the survey respondents, we have categorized them along a scale that goes from “novice” to “expert”, and we analyzed the data to evaluate their use of OER and their adoption of open teaching practices, looking for relationships between the two phenomena. The main finding of this paper, which confirms the latest research findings from the open education community, is that a strong relationship exists between the two dimensions: The more an educator uses OER, the more he will probably adopt open teaching practices, and vice versa. These results are discussed with a view to use this virtuous circle between the use of open content and adoption of open teaching as a way to build generalized open education capacity among universities’ teaching staff.


2014 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javiera Atenas ◽  
Leo Havemann

Open educational resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials which are freely available and openly licensed. Repositories of OER (ROER) are platforms that host and facilitate access to these resources. ROER should not just be designed to store this content – in keeping with the aims of the OER movement, they should support educators in embracing open educational practices (OEP) such as searching for and retrieving content that they will reuse, adapt or modify as needed, without economic barriers or copyright restrictions. This paper reviews key literature on OER and ROER, in order to understand the roles ROER are said or supposed to fulfil in relation to furthering the aims of the OER movement. Four themes which should shape repository design are identified, and the following 10 quality indicators (QI) for ROER effectiveness are discussed: featured resources; user evaluation tools; peer review; authorship of the resources; keywords of the resources; use of standardised metadata; multilingualism of the repositories; inclusion of social media tools; specification of the creative commons license; availability of the source code or original files. These QI form the basis of a method for the evaluation of ROER initiatives which, in concert with considerations of achievability and long-term sustainability, should assist in enhancement and development.Keywords: open educational resources; open access; open educational practice; repositories; quality assurance(Published: 24 July 2014)Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2014, 22: 20889 -http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v22.20889


Author(s):  
Seth Gurell ◽  
Yu-Chun Kuo ◽  
Andrew Walker

Open education, as embodied in open educational resources (OER) and OpenCourseWare (OCW), has met and dealt with several key problems. The movement now has a critical mass of available content. Leveraging no small amount of funding and associated development, open education has the tools to collect, disseminate, and support the discovery of open materials. Now that the foundation for openness has been laid, practitioners are experimenting with new kinds of education and pedagogies associated with open content (Weller, 2009; di Savoia, 2009). Problem-based learning is one of many progressive pedagogies that might be combined with open education. This paper defines problem-based learning in the context of open education. Unique challenges are presented and discussed alongside possible solutions, realistic limitations, and calls for implementation in the future to test validity.


Seminar.net ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Theo Hug

 Relationships between the private and public sphere in education have been discussed repeatedly and in various ways. However, the role of media and media dynamics is widely underestimated in this context. It is only recently, since the digital turn, that the focus of the debates has changed. In the past few years, manifold initiatives have aimed at opening up education on various levels using digital communications technologies and Creative Commons licenses. Additionally, massive open online courses (moocs) have been developed. Today, OER (Open Educational Resources) is used widely as an umbrella term for free content creation initiatives: OER Commons (http://www.oercommons.org/), Open Courseware (OCW), OER repositories, OCW search facilities, University OCW initiatives, and related activities. Shared resource sites such as Connexions (http://cnx.org), WikiEducator (http://wikieducator.org), and Curriki (www.curriki.org) have an increasing number of visitors and contributors.On one hand, the motif of ‘education for all’ is once again appearing in related debates and practices. On the other hand, notions of sharing play a crucial role in open content and open education strategies. This purpose of this paper isthreefold: It starts with an outline of selected understandings of sharing in educational contexts; it then addresses their relevance for OER development through examining contrasting and relational conceptual dimensions. Lastly, the contribution aims to sketch different forms of sharing related to media forms.


Author(s):  
Benjamin Kehrwald ◽  
P. A. Danaher

Open wikis such as WikiEducator (WE) (http://www.wikieducator.org/Main_Page) lie at the intersection of two significant applications of learning technology: open educational resources (OERs), which are freely available materials that can be shared, modified, adapted, and reused in diverse learning contexts; and collaborative authoring environments. This chapter presents a case study of the use of open wikis in a single online postgraduate course in the College of Education at Massey University (New Zealand). The case discussion includes an illustration of the use of open wiki technology at WikiEducator within the course from two different points of view: the use of wikis as a presentation tool by the course teaching staff; and as a production tool by learners seeking to create OERs as part of an instructional design project. The chapter also links the challenges and opportunities associated with these points of view to wider possibilities and pressures attending the terrain in which contemporary higher education is situated.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 47-52
Author(s):  
Alica Vančová ◽  
Terézia Harčaríková ◽  
Ildan G. Idiyatullin ◽  
Mongush N. Chochagay

The formation of a digital education space is an important moment for the development of the education system in the modern world. The article analyzes the problems of ensuring the security of information technologies in the management of the educational process of organizations, the risks and threats of open Internet resources in the context of integration and inclusion. It is proposed to identify the process of forming digital mentors in a pandemic Covid time as a safe expert space that can reduce risks and threats. Materials and Methods. Using the method of descriptive analysis of datasets voluntarily made publicly available on the Internet by educational organisations allowed the authors to investigate examples of large-scale projects of virtual schools in the formats of exchange models for information subscribers and system integrators. The issues of ensuring the safety of underage users, legal shortcomings of access and protection of Internet consumers of open educational resources were discussed. Results. The study has shown that the evidence from innovative processes of developing and producing open educational resources is complex, context-specific and difficult to generalise. Such initiatives require significant organisational change, including external partners of educational organisations and stakeholders with different cultures and educational practices. The authors highlight the use of benchmarking technology as a tool for the quality of intellectual integrations and the effectiveness of educational activities as a whole as an important condition for the success of the processes taking place. In the context of the research, the authors raise the issue of computer addiction among pupils and students and their safe interaction with multifaceted information online, drawing attention to the need for legal and educational measures for online safety, which should be planned and implemented in the educational organisation on a regular basis. Open educational resource OER initiatives are related to institutional change and require appropriate pedagogical and psychological approaches and legal support to help all actors in the educational space adapt to changes in the IT culture. The materials of this article will be useful to specialists and educational managers, including inclusive education, in developing prospective strategies for digital education and models for the development, production and maintenance of open educational resources.


Open Praxis ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivien Rolfe

For those receiving funding from the UK HEFCE-funded Open Educational Resource Programme (2009–2012), the sustainability of project outputs was one of a number of essential goals. Our approach for the hosting and distribution of health and life science open educational resources (OER) was based on the utilisation of the WordPress.org blogging platform and search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques to curate content and widen discovery.This paper outlines the approaches taken and tools used at the time, and reflects upon the effectiveness of web strategies several years post-funding. The paper concludes that using WordPress.org as a platform for sharing and curating OER, and the adoption of a pragmatic approach to SEO, offers cheap and simple ways for small-scale open education projects to be effective and sustainable.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Horlacher

The thesis examines the Creative Commons Licenses 4.0 and the CC Zero 1.0 license using the example of granting rights of use for university teaching. It analyses to what extent these model license agreements are compatible with the requirements of German copyright and contract law and whether they create suitable framework conditions for rights of use materials for educational materials that meet the goals of the Open Educational Resources movement. Open Educational Resources are seen by education policy actors as a tool to facilitate access to high-quality educational materials and thus contribute to educational equity.


Author(s):  
Jan M. Pawlowski ◽  
Denis Kozlov

The paper presents a model for the analysis, comparison and validation of standards, specifications and in particular reference models in the field of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL). The Reference Model Analysis Grid (RMAG) establishes categories of reference models and standards. Based on those categories, a set of criteria for the analysis and validation of standards was elaborated as a part of the ICOPER project that aims at interoperable open content for competency-based TEL. The analysis of standards in this context is targeted at developing a set of validated approaches that lead to a new reference model. Four standards were investigated, taking into account a broad range of aspects like practical and semantic interoperability and integration issues. In the case study, the authors analyzed both, the standards and specifications and the usefulness of the RMAG. The results of this case study can be used for further analyses of TEL standards as well as for reference models targeted at interoperability.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document